Larry Goldman joined the Navy when he was 17, right out of school in 1973.

His brother was in the Navy, and he thought it was a good option. The war in Vietnam was winding down, and it seemed the military life would be a little less adventuresome, at least in terms of traveling to exotic locales and meeting new people and having to perhaps kill them.

He didn't know at the time that he was signing up to be waterboarded.

After basic, as part of his training to become a member of the Navy's aviation crew (he wound up serving as an aviation anti-submarine warfare operator) he was sent for something called SERE training, required of all personnel before they set foot aboard an aircraft. It was meant to prepare them for the possibility of being captured by the enemy, using, ironically, tactics that had been developed by the enemy. SERE is an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.

He and the other sailors (during training, they were referred to as prisoners) were bused to the Navy's SERE training grounds in the mountains northeast of San Diego, near Warner Springs. He joked that the school, intended to train sailors how to survive by their wits, had been so well-established that when the bus pulled up all of the animals in the vicinity headed for the hills, knowing that they would soon be hunted down for food.

The training began in the mornings, with classroom instruction on evading the enemy, resisting interrogation if they were captured and escaping. The afternoons were spent scavenging for food. The sailors were housed in tents made from parachutes.

He recalled a movie they were shown to illustrate what to do to evade the enemy – or, more precisely, what not to do. The film depicted guys running and doing a tuck and roll over fallen trees, something that made them look "like a caricature of Rambo with his head cut off," Goldman wrote later.

Most of the training was intended to mimic the conditions they would face if they suddenly found themselves in a hostile environment, armed just with their wits and a knife. Their only gear was the clothing on their backs and a knife. Goldman selected a knife that appeared to be a cross between a butcher's knife and a machete. The blade broke the first time he tried to use it.

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Larry Goldman uses a text-to-speak device, at his home in York Township, while describing his waterboarding experience in the Navy during the 1970s.(Photo11: Paul Kuehnel, York Daily Record)

The most useful information concerning survival training was to be wary of live baby rattlesnakes when cutting open their mothers. He never got the opportunity to use it, though. It seemed every living thing they could hunt to eat had fled when they arrived.

They were put out into what was called the "evasion course," which was essentially about 3 square miles of open field, save for a few trees and brush that could survive in the sandy soil. Trainers, acting as enemy combatants, hunted them down, which wasn't much of a task since there was really no place to hide and making it the 3 miles to a safe area called "Freedom Village" seemed like a myth since none of the sailors made it there.

Goldman's strategy was to curl up in the fetal position behind the closest tree and wait for everyone else to be captured and then turn himself in.

He was captured in about 10 minutes, a black hood was pulled over his head and he was thrown into the back of a pickup truck.

He was taken to a POW camp and put into a pig pen encased in chicken wire with eight other "prisoners." He tried to escape but was caught and thrown back in. Later, he was locked in a 3-by-3-foot cell. He was beaten for declining to bow to the trainer playing the "commandant," who, strangely, smoked cigarettes like communists and fascists depicted in the movies, by pinching it between his thumb and index finger. The bruises stayed with him for a month, he recalled.

The "commandant" tried to make nice with him, offering him a cigarette. He asked what his job was, and Goldman lied, saying medic. He asked Goldman where he went to school, volunteering he had gone to Berkeley. He asked a few questions about the location of his base of operations, and Goldman refused to answer honestly.

As the training wound down, Goldman thought he would escape relatively unscathed, save for a few scrapes and bruises. He had survived on fear and adrenaline.

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Larry Goldman, of York Township, when he served as a police officer in Israel for five years around 2002.(Photo11: Paul Kuehnel, York Daily Record)

"I was wrong," Goldman wrote later.

The last bit of business was the waterboard. After he refused to read a statement in front of the other trainees declaring that he was an American war criminal and other propaganda, the "commandant" ordered him to be waterboarded.

The waterboard was a 7-foot-long table with straps to secure the arms, legs and head of those placed on it. He would learn that even with the restraints, three or four people were needed to hold the person down.

"Some guards grabbed me and laid me down on the waterboard, strapped me in, put some washcloths over my nose and mouth and started pouring a continuous stream over my face," he wrote later. "When I couldn't hold my breath any longer and took a breath, droplets of water started to enter my lungs and it was really unbearable. I really thought that I might die right there."

He felt somebody checking his pulse and thought that if he could consciously slow his pulse, they would think he was in danger and would let him up. He meditated and relaxed his body, and they released him, asking him if he would read the propaganda. He said he would read it twice if they wanted him to. He just wanted the torture to stop.

"The waterboard was used as punishment on me," he wrote. "They didn't want to talk to me. They didn't want information to be gathered this way. It wouldn't be reliable."

He said he would have said anything to make it stop. "Physically, you think you're going to die," he said. "Psychologically, you think, if you let me up, I will tell you the winning numbers of the Powerball."

Now 61 and living in York Township with a service-related malady that has affected his ability to speak, Goldman is CEO of Sabra Security, an anti-terrorism consultancy. He has dual citizenship, U.S. and Israeli, and had served as a police officer in Israel for five years at the turn of the century.

He recalled that after his SERE training, after returning to the base, he ate "the largest ham sandwich known to man" and laid down for a nap. He slept for more than 25 hours.

"While the enemies may change," he wrote, "I guess the methods do not. They are still using the waterboard at the Navy SERE location in California. I guess other primitive cultures still use it."

Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at 717-771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.